If you were filling out brackets for a showdown between the U.S. military’s 7,000 drones, you probably wouldn’t pick the Global Hawk to take it all. It fires no missiles. It kills no insurgents. It’s won’t fool you intothinking it’s a hummingbird and it won’t ever land on an aircraft carrier. But it might have been the Cinderella story of drones this year.
Manufacturer Northrop Grumman reveals that the Global Hawk, a veteran spy drone flown by the Air Force and Navy, had an absolutely torrid March. It spied on Moammar Gadhafi’s anti-aircraft missiles in Libya. It monitored the radiological devastation in Japan. It found the time to check on insurgents in Afghanistan.
Check out these stats, preferably in a Dick Vitale voice. In March alone, supporting three different military operations, the Global Hawk — in use for a decade — put up 2,134 hours during 119 missions, according to a slide from the manufacturer titled “March Madness.” (.pdf) Stretch that from March 1 to April 14 and it rises to nearly 2,491 hours of flight time. That includes the Navy’s relief mission in Japan, where it became the first drone to fly into a radiologically contaminated environment.
Northrop may be a little defensive about the Global Hawk’s numbers. Defense News reminds that the Pentagon’s evaluators considered the drone’s latest variant unimpressive in recent performance tests. At the Paris Air Show this week, the company’s top Global Hawk salesman rolled out the stats to turn back the impression that the $12.4 billion program is a turkey. (OK, so the big price tag of the Global Hawk probably precludes it from being a true Cinderella story.)
Still, the Global Hawk was the first drone on the scene in Libya — where Northrop’s slides implied it monitored everything from refugee flow to civilian traffic to the search and rescue effort for a downed F-15 crew. In Afghanistan, it spotted insurgents planting bombs and moving to attack U.S. troops. Also, don’t forget its missions sniffing out drugs in Mexico.
Northrop is also eagerly portraying the drone as a journeyman. A Darpa effort to use it as a mid-air refueling platform for other drones is set to get under way in force as early as this summer, with two Global Hawks attempting the first ever autonomous midair refuel. Check out the company’s adorable artists’ rendition:
But can it satisfy the refs at the Pentagon?
But can it satisfy the refs at the Pentagon?
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